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B.C.'s forestry crisis is rooted in ideology
May 06, 2008This province has had since May 2005 to come up with a decent plan to address what was already a growing crisis in the coastal forest industry.
On Monday, it was odd to see the United Steelworkers, now representing forest industry workers who used to be with the Industrial, Wood and Allied Workers, meeting with Premier Gordon Campbell.
The USW was bringing a 10-point plan to Victoria for Campbell and Forestry Minister Rich Coleman to consider in helping out the failing industry.
Just how badly the industry is failing could not be shown more dramatically than by workers leaving the Harmac mill later in the day expecting to be out of a job before the end of the week.
That's quite a reversal. Long before the strike that started last summer and went for six weeks, a request from industry and the IWA for some sort of assistance plan had gone to Coleman. In the midst of the strike, when it became clear that no matter what the results that the industry was headed for trouble, Coleman said the plan was drafted and would be released a week after the strike ended.
The strike ended and it was a lot longer than a week before the report appeared. It was tepid, and worse than too, little too late -- it was useless.
While no one in 2005 could have forecast what would happen with the Canadian dollar, or that the U.S. economy would begin melting down two years later, all the signs were there that the coastal forest industry was headed for trouble.
The concessions made to end the 2003 strike by the IWA, to be taken over by the USW a year later, were not having the benefits the industry owners were looking for. The concessions were made in a context in which the B.C. coastal forest industry was trying to compete in a market that effectively ceased to exist.
The market for North American wood had been effectively reformed by U.S. sawmills as they retooled their mills for niche markets.
It was not up to the province to step in and tell the wood industry how to run their businesses, but they had a responsibility to act when it became clear that the industry could no longer sustain itself.
All we seemed to hear about B.C. forests was the pine beetle. As serious a problem as that is, more was required. The government needed to gather up industry, communities and the IWA/USW and begin working on a plan that included the pine beetle crisis -- affecting mainly the Interior forest industry -- and create a strategy.
What did come out of the Ministry of Forests seemed to only add to the problems. The policies, following on the Liberal ideological bent, seemed rather to exclude hearing from labour or communities. What happened between the government and industry owners is not clear, and one has to ask if compromised safety standards was one such outcome.
After the accident rate climbed the government had to backtrack on that, but their eyes remained firmly closed to the complete mismanagement of a resource that was once the envy of the world. The raw logs continued to flow out of the province and the economic focus turned to enriching shareholders instead of investing in new technologies necessary to compete on the world market.
On Monday, it was odd to see the United Steelworkers, now representing forest industry workers who used to be with the Industrial, Wood and Allied Workers, meeting with Premier Gordon Campbell.
The USW was bringing a 10-point plan to Victoria for Campbell and Forestry Minister Rich Coleman to consider in helping out the failing industry.
Just how badly the industry is failing could not be shown more dramatically than by workers leaving the Harmac mill later in the day expecting to be out of a job before the end of the week.
That's quite a reversal. Long before the strike that started last summer and went for six weeks, a request from industry and the IWA for some sort of assistance plan had gone to Coleman. In the midst of the strike, when it became clear that no matter what the results that the industry was headed for trouble, Coleman said the plan was drafted and would be released a week after the strike ended.
The strike ended and it was a lot longer than a week before the report appeared. It was tepid, and worse than too, little too late -- it was useless.
While no one in 2005 could have forecast what would happen with the Canadian dollar, or that the U.S. economy would begin melting down two years later, all the signs were there that the coastal forest industry was headed for trouble.
The concessions made to end the 2003 strike by the IWA, to be taken over by the USW a year later, were not having the benefits the industry owners were looking for. The concessions were made in a context in which the B.C. coastal forest industry was trying to compete in a market that effectively ceased to exist.
The market for North American wood had been effectively reformed by U.S. sawmills as they retooled their mills for niche markets.
It was not up to the province to step in and tell the wood industry how to run their businesses, but they had a responsibility to act when it became clear that the industry could no longer sustain itself.
All we seemed to hear about B.C. forests was the pine beetle. As serious a problem as that is, more was required. The government needed to gather up industry, communities and the IWA/USW and begin working on a plan that included the pine beetle crisis -- affecting mainly the Interior forest industry -- and create a strategy.
What did come out of the Ministry of Forests seemed to only add to the problems. The policies, following on the Liberal ideological bent, seemed rather to exclude hearing from labour or communities. What happened between the government and industry owners is not clear, and one has to ask if compromised safety standards was one such outcome.
After the accident rate climbed the government had to backtrack on that, but their eyes remained firmly closed to the complete mismanagement of a resource that was once the envy of the world. The raw logs continued to flow out of the province and the economic focus turned to enriching shareholders instead of investing in new technologies necessary to compete on the world market.
What has been happening in the forest industry in the province has happened for two reasons: The government has created an atmosphere in which owners are not accountable for the mess they have created in this industry, and the government itself -- to protect such a policy -- has had to pretend nothing has gone wrong.
To say market changes and the strong dollar created this crisis is a cop out. Accidents don't happen, they are caused.
Downturns happen, and good business practices and government guidelines cushion such events, they don't make them worse.
